Wembley FC need your help.

[Inquisitor]

I'm sorry to post on here but a small non league club needs your help to fight the FA.

https://www.change.org/p/football-a...ootball-club-dropping-wembley-from-their-name

 

[Porrohman]

Signed. Typical. F A

 

[BelizeHatter]

Disgusting if true.

 

[AFaceInTheCrowd]

The disgraceful signed a few days back their greed knows no limits said when the FIFA scandal broke were the fa outraged by the corruption or felt left out because they couldn't get their nose as deep into the trough as everyone else.

They offered to play friendlies in Thailand in exchange for votes and offered fake jobs like the rest. Only problem was it didn't work.

 

[shoddycollins]

I had a little look into this.

While true that the FA have sought protection for their own use of the Wembley trademark it seems this incident may have been blown out of proportion. The FA themselves have said very little so this is based on the writings of a lawyer who the BBC consulted as well as an article I found on a website about marketing. Hopefully these are neutral and expert opinions, and the content of the articles doesn't suggest they totally side with the FA.

Apparently Wembley FC had proactively registered their trademark in various foreign countries and their ownership of this trademark was preventing the FA using the Wembley Stadium trademark in those countries so they sought exclusive rights to said trademark. Legal experts have suggested this isn't about forcing the club to change their name or logo, but about allowing the FA to use the name overseas.

I don't know why Wembley FC would want their trademark protected overseas, but apparently their badge was intellectual property of Budweiser, designed as part of a sponsorship deal and Budweiser then granted it to Wembley FC when the deal ended. It's possible Budweiser went around trademarking it everywhere and now the club are bearing the brunt of that. But either way there seems to be no need for them to challenge the ruling. Perhaps they were hoping that the FA would buy the trademark from them instead of taking legal action, fair play to them if so, perhaps they just wanted the limelight, we know non-league owners enjoy the publicity a storm in a teapot can bring them, and being the little guy in all of this you can't really begrudge them that.

If they'd had any sense I'm sure the FA would have realised that if they went through the courts it would get into the press and end up being made to sound like they were taking punitive measures, and the best thing to do would have been to see what sort of compensation they wanted to release the trademarks.

 

[That Fat Centre Half]

Yes when I read about this I did think there was almost certainly more to this than initially met they eye. Think best approach for all sides is for the FA to just stump up the funds for the trademark, although I am not sure if that would itself be an issue given surely the FA cant be seen to be giving what I would assume is fairly significant funds to a club in its own pyramid. Surely clubs in Wembley FC league would not be best pleased at that?